March 09, 2009

How to Stop an Alien Invasion

Things were so much easier in the old days.

Unlike the recent Secret Invasion by the Skrulls, which required an 8-part series and multiple tie-ins to defeat, it didn't take much to repel the first invasion of the shape-changing aliens back in Fantastic Four #2 (1962).

Posing as the defeated Skrull agents who'd been impersonating them, the Fantastic Four visited the Skrull mothership to convince its commander to call off the invasion. What did ultra-genius Reed Richards use to strike fear into the Skrulls? Expose them to the common cold virus? Show them a mighty super-weapon of his own invention? A giant projected illusion of Earth's spaceship armada? The Ultimate Nullifier?!!?

Nope. He used panels from sci-fi comic books...specifically from titles Marvel was still publishing!

(click on the panels for a larger view)

A number of questions and observations come to mind:

1. Whose comic books were those, anyway? You could assume they belonged to young Johnny Storm (who's just a teenager at this point in time), but the fact that Reed was even aware of the images suggests the comics might have been his! Personally, I think BenGrimm was comic book reader, since the vaguely subliminal nature of each F.F. member's powers suggests Ben was familiar with the grotesque array of Marvel Monsters, and may have,in effect, become one when the cosmic rays did their thing. Sue? Come on...girls don't read comics (KIDDING!!!). As you can see from the final panel, she seemed more concerned about her hair than silly old comics, anyway.

2. How do you get promoted to the position of Skrull Armada Commander without being able to tell the difference between drawings and photos?

3. Those are some big, honkin' comic book panels Reed "clipped".

4. So, which (if any) actual comics were those images taken from? Using my vast Marvel Monster knowledge (and the Grand Comics Database), I didn't see any Journey Into Mystery covers that matched Reed's monster images...but several Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish covers did have some candidates:

The Red Monsters: These guys seem to be a combination of Rommbu from Tales to Astonish #19(1961) and one of the red "Space Beasts" from the cover of Tales to Astonish #29...although the latter wasn't published until March of '62 (but may have been on the drawing board).

The Giant Ants: The closest thing I could find to a giant ant army were the covers of Strange Tales #73 (1960), featuring Grottu, King of the Insects or Krang the Unbelievable from Tales to Astonish #14 (1960)... although neither of them appear to be as large as the ants in Reed's clipped panel.

The Orbiting Space Mine: I got nothin'...though I have to say, I hope somebody at the Pentagon gives it some thought.

5. How did the Fantastic Four resist bursting out into loud, bawdy laughter at the toolish idiocy of the Skrull commander? Their poker faces in the final panel are amazing!

6. Despite the jaw-dropping desperation of Reed's last-ditch ploy, it nonetheless demonstrates one of the many practical uses for comic books (besides scaring off potential friends): Alien Invasion Preventer! Keep a few handy just in case!

Comments

Why were the pictures so big? How did Reed get them? How did he have pictures from comics that were not even published? The answer is in the later issues (the visit with the FF, the return of Dr Doom, etc.) where it's revealed that the FF had regular story conferences with Stan and Jack.

As for the Skrulls confusing pictures and photos, this is just the kind of detail that makes it believable: we're so used to aliens being "just like us" that we never expect serious differences - like poor eyesight, or that a commander might actually trust the judgment of his underlings (remember that the FF were posing as Skrull spies at the time)

I think John Byrne came back to this story and hung a lampshade on the incredibly gullible Skrull commander by having Reed explain that his study of the Skrull captives showed him that Skrull have lousy eyesight - but you'd think a highly advanced race of shapeshifters would have fixed that.

Byrne did follow this up in an FF annual where the Skrull cow's milk had an effect on the local townsfolk. Later, they were slaughtered for their meat and thus were born the Skrull Kill Krew..who resurfaced in Secret Invasion

> you'd think a highly advanced race of shapeshifters would have fixed that.

Ah, but that's what makes it so believable! A highly advanced race of shapeshifters would never be defeated by anyone, UNLESS there was some fundamental weakness that they could not overcome. Maybe the genetic price for shapeshifting is low IQ and poor eyesight. I mean, the fact that the Skrulls continually try to defeat earth people and fail, that must prove something.

Always a possibility, but I think any race that's advanced to the point of interstellar space travel has figured out drawings vs. the photographic capturing of light rays. I've seen other theories around the web that claim the Skrulls may have had bad eyesight and couldn't distinguish from drawings and photographs...which again doesn't seem likely from a space-faring race, especially one that can alter its body shape (and eye-focus) at will.

Even worse, in later stories Lee and Kirby established that the Skrulls had first landed on Earth in the 1930's. How the Skrulls could have contact with Earth for decades and not realize that these were drawings is beyond me.